Despite generous financial support and a $2.4-million payout from police to turn against his underworld colleagues, a Toronto mobster was making far more money as a crook than he did as a double agent.

During a break from working with police as an informant, Carmine Guido went back to his old life in crime and in about six months he made about $800,000 from drug deals, court heard during his testimony as the star witness in an important mob trial.

From that he had settle for $15,000 a month plus use of a leased BMW and a Toronto condo to work as the inside man for an anti-Mafia police task force when he got back into business wearing a wire.

When the police operation closed in June 2015 with sweeping arrests, Guido was also awarded $2.4-million, although he said he had to sue police to get them to pay up.

Under cross examination, Wednesday, Dragi Zekavica, lawyer for accused mobster Giuseppe Ursino, 64, known as Pino, suggested Guido was rolling in government money.

“I didn’t go into being an agent for the money,” Guido objected. It was for his peace mind and a way out, he said.

“I figured, if I’m going to do this, I got to live the rest of my life in hiding, I’m going to need so much money,” he said.

“I had to leave for another life, leave everyone I knew behind, leave every source of income. I can’t walk out with no money. I need money to survive. I compensated my family for everything I was going to put them through.”

The monthly stipend from police helped him maintain his cover on the street as a working mobster, he said.

“I still had to maintain that I was some wiseguy gangster.”

Guido was born in Toronto to Italian immigrants from Calabria in Southern Italy. He ran tough as a kid, getting into fights and into trouble with police before he even left high school.

Nobody talked to me before until they saw the money I was bringing in

He worked in carpentry with his uncle’s construction company but slowly shifted his talent from job sites to the streets. He was involved in equipment and bank frauds and started spending more time in Italian social clubs with established gangsters, he told court under cross examination.

He soon found himself hooked into organized crime, specifically the ’Ndrangheta, the Mafia from Italy’s southern region of Calabria.

Guido admitted what he knew of the Mafia at the time came from movies and a Google search. But he looked the part, admitting he had a “dangerous image” that helped.

He soon saw firsthand how the mob worked in real life. He started finding clients for a mob-backed sports betting operation and then moved into blackmarket debt collecting.

He was “claimed” by a mobster, meaning he was answerable to one specific made mob member and joined his crew of fellow gangsters.

“He was like the foreman of a construction crew,” Guido said.

The ’Ndrangheta is a collection of family-based clans of Calabrian origin, court heard earlier. Each clan has its own boss who works within a uniform structure and under a mutually respected board of control. In Ontario, it is at the top of the underworld food chain.

Police seized 2.5 kilograms of marijuana and 7 kilograms of cocaine during the course of the investigation into the Canadian arm of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia crime group.CFSEU/RCMP

Guido said he learned who the bosses were by who got to go into the backrooms of the mob-controlled cafés when business was being discussed.

“The way people respected Alex was different from the way they respected Frank,” he said of two of his early mob mentors. “You could see it. Alex would never go in the backroom.”

The top boss within the clan he hooked into was Ursino, he told court.

Guido was not a “made” man, meaning he was only an associate and not a proper member of the ’Ndrangheta and, according to the usual rules of the ’Ndrangheta, someone like him shouldn’t be dealing directly with a boss.

Court previously heard from a police officer from Italy that the members of the ’Ndrangheta are divided into ranks, including Minore (or minor, lower-ranked members) and Maggiore (or major or higher-ranked members). Only Maggiore members were supposed to talk business with other Maggiore to insulate them from prosecution.

Zekavica suggested in court that Ursino was never a made member of the ’Ndrangheta or a boss or Maggiore member, because he was talking business with an associate like Guido.

“They get greedy, when they see money,” Guido explained.

“Nobody talked to me before until they saw the money I was bringing in,” he said. “When they get greedy, they bend their own rules. I never approached anybody, they approached me.”

RCMP Superintendent Keith Finn points to mug shots of some of the 19 men arrested allegedly from the Canadian arm of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia crime group during a press conference in Aurora, Ont. on June 3, 2015.J.P. Moczulski for National Post

Zekavica pointed out wiretaps played in court in which Ursino asked Guido for petty loans; if he was a boss, Zekavica suggested, his client wouldn’t be broke.

Guido said Ursino gambled a lot of his money away: “He used to bet on horses all the time. That’s why he lost a lot of his respect,” he said. “I’ve seen him betting on horses myself.”

Guido said he partnered with Ursino in ventures and paid tribute from his crimes to Ursino only for the protection that being a known associate of an ’Ndrangheta clan brought him on the street. It warned other criminals and other criminal organizations away.

The last meeting Guido had with Ursino for police was on May 27, 2015.

At the time, Guido was being threatened by other mobsters, he said. His secret double life seemed to be leaking out.

“It was getting tough for me, I couldn’t go on too much longer,” Guido said. “I was under a lot of stress. I started losing my mind.”

Two days before police arrested of Ursino, Cosmin Dracea, 41, known as Chris, and others who are not on trial in this case, Guido was moved into hiding by police.

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